The 80 Rules of Social Media by @JeremyWaite is a clever Pinterest style infographic offering 80 tips and insights on the world of social media. You’d think by now we’d have heard everything there is to hear about social media, but this collection covers a lot more than the social web. There are gems here like, 42: “If fans start publishing and sharing your content without your permission, offer to help.” and of course 67: “Giving away free iPads to people on Facebook is fine – as long as you have no intention of building a lasting relationship with them”. bitrebels

The closer you are to the meaning and spirit of what content marketing means, the closer you are to understanding how it will help your business grow.

Based on my experience as a content creator and through the content marketing consulting we do at TopRank, I think there are a few key principles for companies to understand in order to get the most out of what content marketing can do for their brand:

In our digitally-driven age, most companies will eventually encounter a social media-driven crisis. Perhaps an employee accidentally tweets an insensitive remark on the company account, or the business is suddenly caught in a whirlwind of negative commentary on Facebook. Whatever the case, you need to be prepared for any blowback that might occur – and it likely won’t be comforting.

Whether the crisis was instigated internally or externally, it’s important to develop a social media crisis plan before engaging with your communities.

More has been written about Google+ over the past 26 months than almost any other social media site. While Google+ has had its share of press, there are still many skeptics.

In the face of the sheer amount of time consumers spend on Facebook and Twitter, how do brands solve the dilemma of where to spend their time and how to justify their presence on yet another social network?

In the Internet Age, people seem to suffer from short-term memory loss. None of the mainstream social media platforms experienced overnight success. As proof, just watch the movie, The Social Network, about Facebook and its founder, Mark Zuckerberg.

I know it’s a tired, over used concept, but that’s the question I was asked recently for an interview. It’s been asked on and off over the past 10 years or so.

Ironically, we’ll be celebrating 10 years of blogging for our business in just a few months and we continue to add new blogs for clients on a regular basis.

With the combined challenge of creating high quality content over a long period of time with increased competition from overall content marketing efforts, it’s no wonder the question of whether business blogging is sustainable keeps coming up.

Google Digs Deeper into Social Business: As a key part of Google’s approach to the Social Business market, they last week launched the Google+ API Domains. The feature, which will allow companies to develop business tools over the Google+ platform, consolidates the social network as a solution that aims to meet the needs of the enterprise user not only in making connections and social relations within the corporation, but also as an enterprise tool for communication and collaboration – a niche which has never “attracted interest from Facebook.”

The Wired article entitled, “Google+ Focuses on Area Facebook Ignores: Corporate Social Networks” may be missing the entire story. Microsoft’s operating system is entrenched across corporate America, with Sharepoint already providing the corporate intranet connection for many. Facebook may not be the loser here. This latest adventure outside the Googleplex will be one to watch.

The moving parts within a marketing organization often get tied up in the mastery and performance of specific tactics like content creation, search engine optimization and social media marketing. Not seeing the forest for the trees can cause some blindness towards the bigger picture.

Before a business decides how, why and what to optimize, socialize and publicize, it’s important to take a step back and ask this essential marketing question, “What are we trying to do?” The answer is usually pretty obvious: “We’re trying to get more people to buy what we’re selling!”

That’s the big picture for most companies, but practical online marketing objectives will be unique to each company’s individual situation. The role of content works across departments and the interaction between departmental content within a company can actually amplify overall business outcomes.

In this era of content marketing, creating and maintaining an editorial calendar and managing all of your content assets are essential for implementing a successful content marketing program.

Content planning tools give you a holistic view of how your brand content editorial calendar fits into your entire content marketing strategy and answers important questions: How does content fulfill the expectations of specific customer segments? Are appropriate content types, topics and promotions in place? Does planned content fit within business growth initiatives and what are the connections to calls to action?

TopRank® Online Marketing takes an integrated approach to content planning and we write extensively on the subject, today I’ll focus on five different tools that you can use to track, control and manage online content. Using content planning tools like these, you can spend more time creating the content objects that will attract, engage and convert more traffic to grow your business.

If you had to bet your job on it, do you feel you could predict the future of content for your organization in the next 12 months? How about in the next 3 years?

The technologies behind the search and social web along with consumer behaviors are changing so fast, it’s a real challenge to anticipate with certainty what exact form content will take in the future. But one thing is certain, the importance of content for brands will be more important, more pervasive and decidedly more competitive.

So what questions can we answer about content over the next 1 to 3 years? I think one of the most important starting points is a consensus within your organization’s leadership as to what content really is, why it matters to customers and the role content will play in advancing business goals.

Analytics firm, BIA/Kelly has predicted that mobile search queries will overtake desktop queries by 2015. Mobile search is an unavoidable part of digital marketing. If brands don’t adapt to consumer behavior, they risk becoming side lined if their competitors are faster to react. And, contrary to long held assumptions, people search for more than just pizza and movie theatre show times on their mobile device.

In Other Online Marketing News…

Instagram now lets users (and marketers) post canned video – Up to now, Instagram and Vine users could only upload videos captured in the moment. With this new feature, users can import any 15 seconds of video from their media library. This could be a big bonus for marketers – ReadWrite

In just a few weeks one of the hottest conferences in the digital marketing industry will be coming to the hometown of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. What better theme than Rock and Roll?

Music is powerful because it motivates us to imagine, to feel, to get up and move. There’s a harmonious parallel between music that inspires action and effective content marketing.

In order to extend that connection, TopRank® Online Marketing has partnered with Content Marketing Institute and the Content Marketing World conference to create a whole “songbook” of practical content marketing advice. With plenty of rock and roll metaphors included, this eBook offers chart topping content marketing tips from major BtoC and BtoB brands presenting at #CMWorld September 9-12, 2013 including:

Google updated their content guidelines for links recently causing a bit of buzz amongst the SEO community, mostly from those looking for clarification. I’ll get to that shortly, but something else popped up that’s worth debunking.

In case you didn’t know, PR agencies do a lot more that create press releases, let alone over-optimize them for search.

Companies rely on PR firms for a variety of services and consulting ranging from strategy and message development to media relations and social media outreach to monitoring and reporting. Product launches, press conferences, event management and promotion, reputation and crisis management, media training, investor relations and of course content creation are all services provided by different PR agencies.